“I would absolutely encourage other continuums to take the 5.0 conversion plunge and to
invest the planning time on the front end that will help make it a seamless one.”
- Jacki McWhortor, HMIS User Support & Training Specialist, Community Information and Referral

Community Information and Referral is the lead agency for implementation of a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant to support the homeless community in Maricopa County, Arizona [www.cir.org/hmis] through development of an extensive Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) database.  The project is steadily growing and already includes 48 agencies, 257 programs and more than 450 users.

Maricopa utilizes ServicePoint and began a seamless transition from 4.0 to 5.0 last summer.  When asked about the conversion process, Community Information and Referral’s Jacki McWhortor, who serves as the HMIS User Support & Training Specialist for the Maricopa HMIS Project, emphasized that pre-planning is the key to a successful outcome.

“Sarah Graham, our System Administrator, spent a lot of time prior to the conversion taking screen shots of how providers were set up so that we had a template and could group easily by agencies,” explained McWhortor.  “We also asked our users what they wanted on their summary page because there are new provider settings in 5.0.  That way when it was time to convert, we left the providers turned off, and we set it up for them.  Approaching it this way, we were able to turn on all 257 programs in less than 8 hours.”

McWhortor also emphasized that pre-training is another essential element for a successful transition.  “Our users had to attend a class if they wanted the upgrade, and to be eligible to participate, they had to be existing users,” said McWhortor.  “It was a desirable transition for them because speed is always the utmost in everyone’s mind, and 5.0 is much faster.”

To prepare for the training, McWhortor took the needed screen shots to document changes and used these in the two hour overview.  The two also went to Shreveport prior to the conversion and worked with JoAnna Storm on training material development. 

“The Bowman Systems Training Department was very responsive to our needs and shared materials that we were able to incorporate into our training,” said McWhortor.  “We wanted to share too, so we placed the 5.0 training material that we developed in the Peer Document section of the Bowman Systems Community Portal CollaboranGo so that others may take advantage of it.  As we continued in the conversion, we also had strong support assistance from Charlton Meyer at Bowman Systems.  He made sure that our follow-up questions were quickly answered.“   

Making the transition as seamless as possible was Maricopa’s primary goal in the conversion.  “We wanted everyone to be comfortable with the new screens and to know they would enjoy and benefit from the efficiency of the new features,” said McWhortor.   “The new version simplifies training because the workflow is so much easier to follow and you go from left to right just like reading a book.”  

“Users also like the size of the fonts and the new look,” noted McWhortor. “Most current users are so used to being on the internet that this look is more familiar, and the easier workflow process leads to more accurate data entry.” She said the ability to attach a service to a class and to track volunteer information are other much anticipated 5.0 enhancements for her users.

In addition, McWhortor reported that Maricopa County has taken advantage of the canned reports and ART reports available in ServicePoint.  “We already had over 900 custom ART reports, and they all converted easily.”  

Planning and timing for different agencies going live was also an important factor which McWhortor highlighted. “Any transition this significant is likely to have a few implementation challenges to overcome,” explained McWhortor.  “For example, the ShelterPoint module was not ready as early as ClientPoint, so those agencies utilizing ShelterPoint went live last in the process. We also lost some print functionality, but we anticipated this and prepared for it by training users to utilize the browser print function so that the overall experience remained positive.  I would absolutely encourage other continuums to take the 5.0 conversion plunge and to invest the planning time on the front end that will help make it a seamless one.”

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